Waiting for the train, I tapped the box, anxious to know what it contained, but I dared not pull anything out here.  What if Rudolf had stuffed expensive jewelry in there?  Or cocaine?  Or a bizarre sexual instrument?

I took the subway back toward the courthouse at Moabit, staring at my reflection in the window glass while the train careened through darkness.

I climbed endless courthouse steps and pushed open the absurdly tall doors designed to make us feel that law was a grand process and justice  about more than the skill of your lawyer.  The trial had started.  The judge gave me a censorious look from his carved bench, a relic of richer times before the war.  Any other day I would have cared, but today I returned his stare without apology.

About one hundred spectators stuffed the courtroom, but I slipped past them and crammed myself onto the press bench, next to Philip Henker from the Berlin Börsen Courier.  He nodded a greeting, his jowls drooping like a mastiff’s.

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